WC1 Music

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chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

No it doesn't; it does sound like a band of rank beginner musicians, with a metronome for a director; but NOT "synthetic" anymore.

EDIT:
I mean, if you mean it in the way you'd say Richard Wagner's Valkyrias piece sounds "synthetic" when directed by Toscanini, then I agree.

(I think Toscanini would have a more productive career as a quality control judge of atomic clocks, than as an orchestra director; but maybe I'm biased.)
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Post by klauss »

chuck_starchaser wrote:And great manual work on your part too, like those crescendos, and channel pannings... absolutely stunning.
Ehm... no manual work. All credit should go to the "Director" (the name of the module). (I hate manual work)
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

That's a huge piece of code, then. Like how would it know where it's best to put a crescendo or a pan?
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Post by klauss »

You could look at the code, but it's rather cryptic why it works... if you read the code, it's not clear what it's doing - not because of bad or untidy coding (though it is utterly untidy), but because the principle under which it works seems quite distant to "crescendo" thingies - the crescendo/diminuendo and overall result is a byproduct of the algorithm.

Basically, it knows where to do such things because it is already suggested in the original. Not by actual crescendos/diminuendos (necessarily - though it may be that too), but by orchestral crescendos/diminuendos (the orchestral buildup, harmonic buildup, modulations, etc...).
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

That's amazing; I think you could make tons of money from it. Specially if the way it works is naturally cryptic, and therefore nobody can steal your idea without copying the code itself. You've got it made, IMO.
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Post by DualJoe »

This all sounds a little different from the ingame music, with that I mean timing and relative volumes of the instruments.
The lead-instruments get a little washed out by the backing ones.
Is that all due to the different "soundfonts" used, or did you do it all by hand?
I run the wing commanders from WINE though, maybe that's where the difference is.
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Post by klauss »

@DualJoe: It may be the mixing - after processing each track, I mixed them, adjusting each track volume myself to that end. I did it because if any one instrument stands out too much, the synthiness of it becomes obvious. It's better when they all blend in together - I could try tweaking the mixing levels again to avoid that a bit, but overall it's necessary.
Anyway... if it sounds good, I don't think anyone would complain about mixing discrepancies (mostly if it's for the better).
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

@Chuck:

re Snares: You have no idea how many hours I spent trying to do just that.


@Klauss:

re Debreifing: That's funny, I wasn't hearing any artifacts in the 'live' synthesis, but it rendered some. Quite odd. Although FLStudio downsamples for MP3s, it shouldn't when it writes waveforms. Probably forgot to make sure high quality export is checked.

re Wing Commander: Very nice work, Klauss. The strings to begin with pretty good, but they sound better now. I just wish the horns would sound a little less fruity. Hrm, I'll ask Justin's opinion, he'd know what to do :D

re Mixing: if the output is seperate tracks, I happen to be quite good at mixing myself (ten years experience :D ) and could see if I can do it any closer to the original. The compressors would walk all over my mixing in the MP3 renders though, with the gain :P
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Post by klauss »

It is extremely important that you do not recompress the tracks after processing. That would destroy the dynamics.

I'll see about uploading the separate tracks... though it is a huge upload... wouldn't you rather upload a rendering of the original, for me to do the mixing? I can mix too, y'know... I just need to be able to compare with the original... and .midi files won't cut it (too many differences between synths).

BTW:
a) FLstudio resamples (not downsamples - resamples - up & down) all the way. That's how wavetable synths work... resampling... the best way to get a quality resampling is using >=6-point hermite interpolation. (I think I got the name right... it's eluding my memory right now).
b) FLstudio is known (rather... renowned) by it's crappy implementation of the mixer. It tends to clip everywhere. You have to export with very low volume (never let peaks go over -6dbFS)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

[eep, double post] Erm, why can't I delete this? :?
Last edited by Privateer Ferrius on Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

I use a 64 Sync Depth Interpolation. At least I think thats what its called. Something with a 64 that I get a warning that it'll be SLOW AS HELL. But it usually isn't, thanks to this beast of a machine.

And regarding the FL mixer - I know. I'ts horrible! Luckily, I've figured out how to get my hardware mixing panel to cooperate with my computer, so I can just make the raw wav tracks, output them to that, and do it the good old fashioned way. The synth itself still leaves a lot to be desired though, which is why I'm working on 'porting' my skills to CuBase Sonar, a much better, but more difficult to use synthesis program. The side effect of this is that, the original FLStudio project doesn't contain mixing information. About the only way I could really help you there would be to take a picture of (or describe) the settings I use on the hardware mixing.

I haven't touch the tracks post-process, yet. That was the first thing J warned me not to do, lol, recompressing the tracks I mean.

[edit] The profile on the Wing Commander Theme for the mixer is

Master: -3 dB Pan: 0%
Track 1: (French Horn) +1db Pan: 25% left
Track 2: (Orchestra Hit) -4db Pan: 10% right
Track 3: (Brass) +2db Pan: 65% left
Track 4: (Drum Kit) -1db Pan: 0%
Track 5: (Timpani) -1.5db Pan: 0%
Track 6: (Strings) +0db Pan: 65% right
Track 7: (Travelling Strings) +1db Pan: 25% right (with a 50/50 pan sine LFO)
Track 8: (Trombone) +1.5db Pan: 30% left

Basically, the horns are on one side and the strings on the other. The only mixing change I made from the MIDI other than volume tweaking was to move the drums to the center, they were with the horns and made it unbalanced.

[edit]: @Chuck: I dont mean to take the wings outta Klauss' sails because he did excellent work, but the channel panning was done by my mixer LFO .. Klauss just made it pretty :P Lol
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Post by klauss »

Privateer Ferrius wrote:[edit]: @Chuck: I dont mean to take the wings outta Klauss' sails because he did excellent work, but the channel panning was done by my mixer LFO .. Klauss just made it pretty :P Lol
Ya... as I said earlier (or I thought I did), the Director feeds on the panning, but it was there already.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Mustadan somthing, 'cuz I didn't hear it before... ;-)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

@Chuck: He put it further up in the mix, for one. And whatever it was he did seemed to emphasize the pans more strongly.

@Klauss: Yeah, I saw, I was just pointing that out to Chuck, and didn't wanna offend you by doing so ^_^;

@Both/Everyone: I remastered the volume (matched, maximized, and then tweaked a bit) ... I don't think I ruined anything ... but I've heard that track so many times it's starting to some sameish, heh. Tell me if I broke anything. All I did was the volume, so if anything else sounds off, thats something I've broke remastering.

Wing Commander Theme 3.0
Last edited by Privateer Ferrius on Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Bah. I forgot the .mp3 at the end. One sec, I'll fix that.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

It crashed Mozilla, but sounds great. Much better. I'm glad you lowered the snaredrum :) Yeah, so the crescendos and pans were yours; imagine how distracting that loud snare was that I hadn't even noticed them. Well, I can't wait to hear it processed by Klauss' Director. I imagine you took care of that clipping track?
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

That is Klauss' track (his waveform, .WAV), just with some volume remastering. As I stated, I took his waveform (wow, am I oldschool to still be calling it a waveform or what), Matched the volume at -22dB, and then Maximized the volume to the full dynamic range. Then I just fiddled with the actual volume.

I've worked as a theatre tech director long enough to know something about mixing ;)
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

I see. How about that clipping track he mentioned? Did you get my PM? You should give him the source; he can do amazing things. Listen to this track from Zaydana that Klauss arranged and rewrote tha bass line for...
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/tmp/mission.ogg
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Well, I suppsoe I can, but I was going to try to hold off until Im done trying to fix the clipping, so he doesnt have to make 100 versions of it. :P

By the way, @Klauss: Is it worth upgrading from the Express version of FLStudio and the SF Player to the next version up? I'm not going to be doing heavy composition or anything, just doing it as a hobby ... but the Express version's lack of a piano roll annoys me. I can deal with the mixer problem, with my hardware setup; I wouldn't even consider buying an upgrade if it were a huge thing to me. That said, is it worth the money to upgrade? (Money itself isn't an issue, since I just got my tax refund today, I'm just wondering if it's worth it)
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Post by klauss »

Volume thingy: I don't like normalizing audio tracks - that is, maximizing the peak intensity (because you won't maximize the dynamic range by adjusting gain)
a) It's something the user can do with the volume knobs... to his liking.
b) It makes it harder later to mantain a coherent musical environment when sequencing the tracks - I mean, not all music is equally loud... something you loose when you maximize peak intensities.
c) It really achieves nothing - if the original had a dynamic range of 44Db, the "maximized" version will too (you're multiplying both the loud and the soft).

What I prefer, is actual normalization - that each track plays equally loud according to its content. Meaning: a voice will play equally loud on both. That is acceptable.

Another point against volume fiddling: it destroys dithering - the only way not to do that (detroy dithering), is to do it right before the output stage, while the data is still in high precision formats (that is... inside my module - after generating the WAV, you can't touch it without killing the dithering). So... usually... I do everything in high precision (32 bits), and after the final mixing, do the dithering.


About FLStudio Express vs whatever other version there is, a) I wouldn't know - I only got a demo version of FLStudio to work on that track chuck posted about, since Zaydana used FLStudio. But, I bet, the synthesizer won't be better. Perhaps better samples, but not better software. Perhaps more neat effects, and synthesizer modes... but nothing more "profound" than that.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Actually, the synth is really watered down in express. the best render I can do is Sync Depth 64, for one, whereas even the demo allows Sync Depths up to 256. Bunch of other stuff, too. Eh, it's a tax refund, may as well, I suppose.

@Klauss - Goldwave's maximize algorithm is just a wee bit more complex than just normalizing the track. It basically throws out the original dynamic range that was present before and the interpolates the range based upon the intensity of swells in the stereo range. So it gets rid of those annoying mixer peaks where they shouldn't be from FLStudio.
What I prefer, is actual normalization - that each track plays equally loud according to its content. Meaning: a voice will play equally loud on both. That is acceptable.
GoldWave can do that - but I need more than a couple tracks done to do that effectively :D
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Post by klauss »

Privateer Ferrius wrote:@Klauss - Goldwave's maximize algorithm is just a wee bit more complex than just normalizing the track. It basically throws out the original dynamic range that was present before and the interpolates the range based upon the intensity of swells in the stereo range. So it gets rid of those annoying mixer peaks where they shouldn't be from FLStudio.
Where did you get that from?
Goldwave's maximize is a plain, simple, scan for maximum value, rescale so that max=1.
Cross my heart.

Unless... you have a newer version than I do - much newer.
Privateer Ferrius wrote:
What I prefer, is actual normalization - that each track plays equally loud according to its content. Meaning: a voice will play equally loud on both. That is acceptable.
GoldWave can do that - but I need more than a couple tracks done to do that effectively :D
My point exactly - it's too early to go about normalizing tracks.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

@Klauss: the development version has a much more complex (and also rather buggy) maximize algorithm.

And either I'm going deaf, ro your tracks were pretty quiet compared to mine, which was the original motive behind those edits.

Also, on an aside, I think you inadvertendly double-posted, Klauss. It did that to me the other day :P
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Post by klauss »

double post: fixed
quietness: yes - it was quite quiet. I tend not to give importance to it, you know... because of the volume knob thingy - I sometimes forget other people not always has the dynamic range I have (I use a headphone preamp ;) )

So... mixing details aside... are you planning on working on more tracks (hint hint) ;)
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